


I Really Wanna Stop (But I Just Got a Taste For It)

by ken_ichijouji (dommific)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But in a dry salty way cause Yurio, Cats, Deaged Katsuki Yuuri, Fluff, Ice Cream, M/M, like...a lot deaged, they're all younger really except Yurio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 07:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13852842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dommific/pseuds/ken_ichijouji
Summary: Yuri Plisetsky loves cats.He hates stupid PR shilling for the ISU.The Japanese skater who's about to move with him to Seniors, he's less sure of either way.





	I Really Wanna Stop (But I Just Got a Taste For It)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lazchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lazchan/gifts).



> This was a commission for Laz! I was asked to write deaged Yuuri/Yurio with them volunteering at a cat shelter and so here we are!
> 
> Yurio's a fun POV character, I gotta say. He really is.
> 
> If you don't know what a Jim Dandy is, [behold](https://www.friendlysrestaurants.com/menu-item/jim-dandy/). Title from Queen Carly Rae, natch.
> 
> I hope you like this, Laz!

Sometimes Yuri hates this stuff, the whole ‘good will, good marketing, play nice for the fans’ crap. 

Today though…today it’s like his birthday and winning gold at Worlds wrapped up in a bow with _Dedushka’s_ cooking on the side.

He changes water in metal bowls, replacing it with fresh, cold, filtered liquid for the beautiful pile of cream-striped kittens sharing an isolation room. Their mewls may be little, but they be fierce, tiny needle -point claws poking through his jeans as they try to climb Yuri like he’s a cat tree. The finalists for the Junior Grand Prix Series are doing some goodwill in the lead up to the big day, and the ISU chose to have them spend a few hours in a no-kill cat shelter cleaning cages, giving clean water and fresh food, and if there’s time… _petting and cuddling the cats_. 

Yuri could die, he’s so pleased.

The Chinese kid, Ji Guang Hong, has an arm full of a scrawny, disgruntled orange tabby. The cat's sour expression is a hilarious contrast to the bright, sunny smile on Guang Hong’s own face as he hauls him into a temporary cage while he cleans and disinfects Creamsicle’s normal abode. 

Unlike a lot of shelters, Tuffy’s Townhome smells clean — a bit like chemicals (bleach in particular) but not the cat-and-dirty-litter smell a lot of rescues can have due to the sheer quantity of animals. Yuri remembers being ten, _Dedushka_ bursting with pride as he showed Yuri to the shelter for him to choose a new best friend. All of the cats available had such strong personalities, but none was fiercer than the Ragdoll who after that day became Potya.

Yuri pets the kitties when he can spare the time, otherwise focused on his tasks. He mostly wants them to have the best everything until they find their forever families and homes. Some of his pay from his last ice show went to buying shelters better toys and healthier, high-quality treats from Tux and Tabby for the babies. He loves them. 

Why can’t he hug _every_ cat?

Another couple of his competitors talk and laugh together while they work. One of them is from Bangkok and never stops smiling. Chulanont’s bright like a sunny day, and Yuri doesn’t like looking directly at him because it hurts.

Chulanont’s best friend is the Japanese skater with those amazing step sequences, but that weird ability to shatter everything else if he thinks too hard. He wears glasses off the rink, and his hair falls in his eyes like black velvet. While Chulanont’s smiles are free, frequent, and brilliant, Katsuki’s are soft and feel earned. He’s not really as serious as a lot of his press makes him out to be, but he’s…something. 

There’s something in the way he moves when he has nothing on his mind but skating.

Chulanont coos in Thai to a group of FIV positive cats, and Katsuki holds his hand to one’s nose like it’s a dog. Yuri rolls his eyes. “Have you ever even touched a cat?”

“My family has a toy poodle,” Katsuki answers. The accent in his English is about on-par with Yuri’s, though maybe somewhat more softened thanks to being sixteen instead of Yuri's fourteen. “There are stray cats back home that live around the restaurants because the owners give them scraps. Japan doesn’t have rabies, so it’s not dangerous to let them go where they please.”

Yuri rolls his eyes with a scoff. “Whatever, Katsudon.”

With a different, sly smile, Chulanont raises an eyebrow. He must get them threaded or something…they’re clean, thick, and their angle is sharp. Katsuki’s are better, though, because they’re less blatantly maintained. “ _Katsudon_ ,” Chulanont replies. “How’d you know about Yuuri’s mom’s cooking?”

Katsuki pushes up his glasses with a JSF-windbreaker-covered elbow. He gives Yuri a look of scrutiny and not much else. 

Yuri is about two shades of red darker than _Dedushka’s_ borscht. He grumbles under his breath and returns to cage cleaning, using far more vigor than is necessary to scrub down the sterilized steel and refusing to turn back to them or to ever say out loud where anyone can hear how many hours he’s watched Katsuki’s programs or interviews. He had to Google what a katsudon even is in the first place, too. It sounds really good — it also sounds like Yakov would ban it on principle.

Katsuki will advance to Seniors with him next season according to his overly-happy Italian coach, which means as much as Yuri’s a better skater than him, they'll still be competitors. Maybe he’ll settle what causes him to crash and do better. Maybe he’ll learn not to roll over so much.

Katsuki smiles as one of the older cats curls up in his arms, eyes closed and purr rumbling so loud Yuri hears it from two meters away. 

Maybe there’s many kinds of strength, and Yuri has only just begun to see this. 

The cages are all clean, the cats are calm and fed, and now it’s time for a fluff photoshoot with Ji, Chulanont, Katsuki, Yuri, the American kid with the ponytail, and that awful Canadian airhorn disguised as a person. 

There will be fur all over their jackets which is going to be super fun for the cleaners at the hotel, but the cats climb all over them while video and still photos are shot. An overzealous diluted calico knocks Katsuki’s glasses off his face, and he laughs so hard tears shine in his eyes like diamonds, like the ice that grounds their chosen paths.

Yuri buries his face in the fluffy cream-striped Maine Coon on his lap named Muffy and suffers in silence.

*****

The ISU takes them out for ice cream after and while nursing a heaping mouthful of a Jim Dandy the size of Yuri’s head, Katsuki sits across from him with a much more likely to be nutritionist approved cup of Fro-Yo topped with mango boba pearls and fresh strawberries. 

Yuri gives him a wary, baleful look with his lime green spoon hanging from between his lips. 

Katsuki gives him a small smile, and Chulanont whisper-yells “You’re doing great, Yuuri,” only to get Fro-Yo flung at him over Katsuki’s shoulder like he’s a seasoned professional at food fights.

Yuri’s spoon clatters to the table as his jaw drops.

Katsuki shrugs, completely unmoved by Chulanont’s “ _Yuuuuuuri_ you’re so mean, I am _Thailand’s Pride_ and deserving of _respect_ —”

Yuri’s stare intensifies to where he could shoot green lasers from his eyes.

Katsuki shrugs. “I have an older sister and a best friend who like to start things with me,” is his explanation. “They learned pretty fast I’m good at ending things, though.”

Yuri recovers his spoon, shoveling more ice cream down his gullet. His hair’s grown long enough that it dredges into the hot fudge and caramel. Katsuki huffs a laugh before reaching across the table to tuck it behind his ear. 

Jumping back like Katsuki surprised him with a haymaker, Yuri stares, wide-eyed with flaming pink cheeks. “Now I have to shower in pure lye,” he stammers, but it comes out halfway between panicked and…happy. Ugh.

Katsuki gives Yuri a strange look, then he sighs and eats his way less awesome Fro-Yo. 

Yuri scarfs down his Jim Dandy and gives Katsuki a wary stare. 

In this distance there is vague Thai catcalling, like sirens approaching a large car crash.

Katsuki pops some boba into his mouth and chews. He does this to the point where Yuri thinks he has dentures or maybe the boba is carved from steel. Maybe it’s cement, and Katsuki’s mouth is gluing itself shut. Maybe —

“Why do you hate me so much?” Katsuki says with no preamble or bitterness. 

It’s an actual, honest question, and it immediately disarms Yuri. He misses his mouth, getting fudge all over his right cheek like he’s eight again with _Dedushka_ during the White Nights when he’d visit during in the off-season. _Dedushka_ always chuckled and wiped his cheeks clean with a napkin, and Yuri’s heart would always expand three sizes. 

Hate Katsuki? No, he…no. No, he’s never actually done anything unlike garbage JJ, and he…he looks so nice when he smiles, soft like a meringue or a coconut macaroon during Passover and just as sweet, too. His eyes light up from brown to something clearer like amber and…

Yuri coughs and eats with the grace of a starving lion. “I hate squandered potential,” Yuri bites out like a filthy curse he’d get time out for. “Not you.”

Katsuki doesn’t answer, stirring the melty bits around his hot pink plastic cup. “I assumed it’s because I’m a dog person,” he says with some mild surprise. Yuri flips his mostly-empty Jim Dandy off the table and storms out. There’s a stalker behind him at a distance of ten paces, and while Yuri speeds his pace, they have longer legs. “Hey,” Katsuki says with a tap on his red and white covered shoulder. “It was a joke, I didn’t think you hate dogs that much — “

Yuri gives him a look like he’s insane. He gestures, pushes him back, and stands next to a metal railing by a busy stretch of road. Katsuki stands next to him while blowing on his hands for warmth. They gelled his hair back for some of the photographs, and he hasn’t washed it out. Katsuki has put his glasses on, though, and instead of looking dorky, he looks like some kind of hazy-filtered selfie from a Korean app. He looks airbrushed, like a woman at the end of some boring romance who’s begging for a boy to love her, and before Yuri knows what he’s doing he kisses Katsuki at the corner of his lips so quickly it may as well not happen at all.

Yuri burns and tries to hide behind a curtain of cornsilk hair as he bolts. Or, well…the attempt is made, because Katsuki has his sleeve gripped tight in his left hand. Not his person, not any part of Yuri himself, but the jacket in some deference to Yuri’s bodily autonomy and right to consent.

God, country, the world, even money — Yuri hates it all in this moment, but he hates nothing more than his own lack of impulse control. Why can’t he avoid being stupid? _Everyone else_ is stupid. _Someone_ needs to avoid being stupid. Why’d he have to end up like _everyone else?_

He tries to jerk his arm away, but then Japan’s Ace (more like _2 of Clubs_ Yuri lies to himself, though it’s weak even in his own head) gives him a soft kiss of his own. Their lips are both way too dry, and Yuri’s are sticky thanks to hot fudge and caramel, but it’s okay. Maybe even good. Katsuki pulls back and wipes his mouth with his bare hand. His face is a little scrunched in thought. When he opens his mouth, Yuri pulls him by the front zipper of his JSF windbreaker and kisses him a third time. 

God forbid he be outdone.

The kissing is surprisingly chaste given how hard Yuri tugged, but it makes his heart flit like the thousands of blue, yellow, and orange butterflies covering him in that pavilion outside of Denver last time he went to the US. Katsuki has mango and strawberry on his breath, and Yuri puts his normal rancor away to hold his hands while the sun sets a little lower each moment they remain connected.

Katsuki pulls away, though this time he doesn’t wipe his mouth. He does, however, pass Yuri a moist towelette with a deadpan expression. 

Yuri scoffs before taking it and wiping the fudge off his face and lips. “Why are you so weird,” he offers, though it’s not a question.

Katsuki shrugs one shoulder and uses a wet nap on his own mouth. “ _I’m_ weird, says the guy that eats messier than my dog.”

“Ugh, why,” Yuri complains.

Katsuki shrugs before taking his hand again. “Why not.”

He’s aggressively beautiful, and Yuri couldn’t hate him if he wanted to. Which he decidedly doesn’t. “Why not,” he echoes.

Katsuki smiles like golden candy floss, and this time, Yuri allows himself to smile back.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr at sinkingorswimming and Twitter at sink_or_swim!!


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